


Remains

by Fossarian



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Children, Children of Characters, Dark Past, Domestic, F/M, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 19:12:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13530768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fossarian/pseuds/Fossarian
Summary: The future is looking bright, but Kylo has problems catching up with it.





	Remains

Rey wants a family, so Kylo gives it to her.

He’d never thought about things like that. Before Rey. Things like the future. It seems like a bad idea.

Notwithstanding Snoke’s fetish of the Skywalker line, he hasn’t had a reason to think about it, and until Rey, he hasn’t concerned himself with whether he’s the last of anything. He’s killed children and mothers and he wants to say he regrets it all, but he knows he’d do it again if he found a good enough reason.

Having someone with his blood, maybe his face or Rey’s, strikes him with the most acute terror. When Rey gives birth to their son and she’s smiling up at him, she says, “Do you want to hold him?”

He looks at the curled fist, a surprisingly full head of hair, and the dark, intelligent eyes that meet Kylo’s like he _knows_. He turns away.

“I’ll hold him when he’s bigger.”

They name him Han and he’s got the Solo eyes - or so Rey says - for they never change. To Kylo it’s merely fitting that he should be haunted in this way.

When he feels ready to hold his son it’s too late and he’s too big. Probably for the best.

Their second son is more like Rey and he comes into the world screaming, but after that he’s the happiest of babies and almost never cries. Rey wants to call him Finn in honor of her dearest friend and Kylo shrugs and says, “Whatever you want.”

He’s gone a lot. There’s only a handful of people in the galaxy who can do what he does, even less who will do it for free. His mother tries to draw him into politics, but there’s a messiness to it, a lack of finality, that depresses him and he retreats into the sacred temples. People find him and send their sons and daughters, even knowing what he’s done. Maybe even because of it.

So, he opens a school. He teaches kids how to kill and how to avoid it in turn. He tells them what he’s done and what it’s like on the other side. How far you can go without a map. He doesn’t know if it matters.

Rey never complains about his absences. Only once does she ask him why he’s better with other people’s children than his own. But it’s in this tolerant way like she already knows the answer.

He makes her more sad than happy. He tries, but she wants all of him. It just doesn’t seem like enough.

Luke had tried to put him down and he betrayed his own master and the cycle goes on. It’s only a matter of time before Rey figures out that he’s only giving the appearance of a man and that there’s no turning back from that road he went down so long ago. He’s only been stalled along the way.

Kylo thinks about these things more than he should.

Then his daughter is born and he wants to name her Rey, but Rey wrinkles her nose. “That’s not a good name. Who is Rey?”

“Padme is a good name,” Leia says.

It’s different with the girl.

“I love you,” he tells her, trying it out.

She blinks up at him. Her eyes will be blue, he says. The women laugh at him _(they’ll be dark like everyone else’s!)_ but time proves him right and they are the color of a clear morning in Chandrila. She is blonde and there’s more than something of Luke in her, in the way she tips her head and gives him that _look_ , as if to say, _Come now, is that the best you can do?_

For the first time Kylo doubts it.

He takes her everywhere. She sits on top of the pillars where Jedi masters have breathed their lies and watches him during his lessons. She claps when he makes bits of fruit float in the air, the better to tempt her into eating them. She squats in the dirt, examining ants as they build their underground palaces, and she doesn’t have to be told not to stomp on them like the boys.

She kisses him so that her long lashes fan against his cheek like butterfly’s wings and she hangs onto his legs, spinning around to songs she alone can hear. She doesn’t care if it takes Kylo too long to respond to her questions or that he jerks at loud noises. Kylo is the sun by which she sets her day.

“You’re so good with her,” Rey says, not accusing.

She sits down next to Kylo and they watch the children play in the gently lapping waters of Leia’s palatial summer house. Kylo scoops a handful of sand, watches it sift between his fingers. There’s probably something he’s missing.

Rey runs her fingers along his brow, bringing him back like a resurrection. Kylo traces the curves of her, thinks _if I’m taken, if I go away_ , and she smiles at him. There’s a serenity about her that was absent when they first met. She has found her place. Kylo wonders if she’s going to ask him for anything else.

“Am I,” he says. He doesn’t want to be his father.

She leans her shoulder against his. They are like ghost and substance, one of solid and the other of shadow. He’ll disappear without her.

He can see all the places where he’s been torn apart and filled with something new, torn apart and filled. How long does he have before someone else comes along and says _No, that’s not right_ and it starts again? It was simpler in the war days. When all he had to do was become an extension of his saber.

His hand twitches, missing the weight. He fills it with more sand.

Laughing, bright and hard as the light on the water, Han shoves his brother and Finn goes sailing backwards in a fit of dramatics, shrieking as he emerges. Rey laughs, “Shove him back!”

Padme is picking seashells and returning them to the ocean. Trying to save empty things like her mother.

“Papa!” she cries, waving her bucket. “Papa, will you help me?”

He stands up and brushes the sand off. “Sure,” he says. 

She smiles at him and it’s a gift the world doesn’t deserve. _What would I do without all of you?_ he thinks. But he knows what he would do. He knows all too well.


End file.
